This will be worth it, I want to tell her. But more than that, I want her to know:

This part is awful.

This moment deserves to be seen. This pain needs to be acknowledged and not glossed over with platitudes about growth and progress.

People who push through that invisible fence are changed forever not because they discovered a magical pasture on the other side, but because they have had their shells burned away and their insides charred.

It makes perfect sense that this hurts so fucking bad.

You are not weak for doubting your ability to endure this pain. Doubt and despair are as inevitable as they are awful when you’re halfway between what you know and what you’ve dreamed about.

The courage that brought you to this hell will bring you out, but first it will desert you.

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The pain is real and temporary. The effects of the pain, those could last forever and possibly be the reasons to not do something. However, that said, it is better to make forward movement than languish in a standstill.daniel’s most recent post: Homeless In My Alley

I love, love, love this post. Too often, when we see someone suffering, we want to help them by telling them to pull back. “Get away from the fence!” we yell, but perhaps we ought to be encouraging them to keep on walking through it. I know a pet peeve of mine is when I’m actively suffering in pursuit of a dream or goal, and the people who love me try to get me to back away. Their intentions are pure, but it might be helpful if more of us reacted as you do toward the end of this post: with support, but no encouragement to abandon the dream. I am going to keep this in mind … and in heart.

beautiful post, my friend.
hope the person going though the difficult time sees this and knows to keep fighting. i am confident they will make it.
love to all.hello haha harf’s most recent post: Question

You’ve just put what I went through last year succinctly into words. It was about a year and a half of an invisible fence…so long that I became dead inside, feeling neither pain nor joy. I’m on the other side now, still reeling a bit, but glad to have some life back in my heart. Glad to feel alive again.
Hope. That’s my word for 2014. Because at the end of last year, I couldn’t even bring myself to see anything better in the future. There was no looking back, and no looking ahead. I prayed that I could just have enough faith to hope for something better.
And slowly, slowly, I’ve been glimpsing hope in my life. Finally out of that electric fence.Naomi Liz’s most recent post: {Tug-of-War} The Urgent and The Somedays

This is what I needed to hear today. Thank you. I’m wrestling with this lately, ready to take a leap but also terrified and so I’m in the thick of the invisible fence (or as I termed it to a friend today, the abyss). The problem is you don’t know how long it will last and you can’t be sure it’s really going to be better on the other side. Faith, in the self and in the world, comes into play.

Great post. The pain, regardless of how many levels it is or what causes it, it’s real and it’s something that many deal with on a regular basis.martymankins’s most recent post: Banal Leakage – Ep #013